Get Shorty

Want your writing to have punch? Want your readers to believe you? “The five-word sentence as the gospel truth…Express your most powerful thought in the shortest sentence,” Roy Peter Clarkwrites in The New York Times. Sorry that every sentence in this post is more than five words.

“It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” Stephen Kingtalked to The Atlantic about what makes a good first line and picked a few of the best. Also read the favorite opening lines of Jonathan Franzen, Roxane Gay and others.

It’s notable when a respected magazine publishes a short story written in the form of a comment thread. It’s even more notable when the author of that story is Bobbie Ann Mason. At The Nervous Breakdown, new fiction from the author of Shiloh and Other Stories.